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OpenSprinkler March 2013 Update

Tomorrow we will be flying south to Peru for a one-week spring vacation (yes, that’s right!) I am very excited about the trip, and am looking forward to visiting Machu Picchu 🙂 Before I go off and get lost in exploring the ancient world, some quick updates about what’s happening recently:

OpenSprinkler Pi is back in stock as of last week, and about 50 have already been shipped out. One user on the Rayshobby forum, Ric, pointed out that the original Python demo code only worked for RPi rev. 1. It turns out, as Ric discovered, that RPi rev. 2 has changes the pin numbers of a few GPIO. So if you own a rev. 2, you should update your code from GitHub, and follow the instructions in README.txt to modify a pin number in your Python code. Thanks Ric for finding this out!.

OpenSprinkler 1.4u will be the last DIY, all through-hole version. As soon as it sells out (there are only a couple of them left in stock), we will discontinue the DIY kits. The main reason is that the support overhead for DIY kits has gradually become too high for me. Although we don’t officially provide any assembly support for DIY kits, when users get into trouble and can’t fix problems themselves, I hate to see them go and have to jump in to help, sometimes even asking them to send the kits back to me so I can fix soldering mistakes for them. This is simply not sustainable any more. One way to solve the issue is to have a community of people to help each other, but i don’t see that happening on OpenSprinkler any time soon. So the only solution is to let go the DIY version. Sorry folks!

We will be going to the Bay Area Maker Faire again this year. I’ve just submitted the proposal to Maker Faire and hopefully it will be accepted. If you are planning to be there too, feel free to come by, hang out with us and watch demos 🙂

Since we are going off for vacation, we won’t be shipping packages until Monday March 25. Meanwhile I will still be checking emails, although probably no more than once a day.

All right, time to pack and prepare for the trip tomorrow. Thanks for reading this post!